The present invention relates to an ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus for obtaining a B-mode image of a diagnostic portion of an inspected object by utilizing ultrasonic waves and, more particularly, to a method of displaying measured information of the diagnostic portion in a three-dimensional image and in a real time and an ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus using such display method.
A conventional ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus includes a transducer unit for transmitting and receiving ultrasonic waves to and from an inspected object, an ultrasonic wave transmission and reception unit for driving the transducer unit to generate ultrasonic waves and processing a reflected echo signal received, a B-mode image making circuit for receiving the reflected echo signal from the ultrasonic wave transmission and reception unit and digitizing the input reflected echo signal to make a B-mode image of the diagnostic object, an image display unit for converting image data from the B-mode image making circuit into an analog signal to thereby display an image, and a control circuit for controlling the above-mentioned respective elements. When the ultrasonic wave image of the diagnostic object of the inspected object is displayed in a three-dimensional image by such conventional ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus, the B-mode scanning done by the transmitted ultrasonic wave is sequentially moved in the direction perpendicular to the B-mode scanning surface by using the transducer unit of a three-dimensional scanning to thereby collect a number of B-mode image in a three-dimensional measurement space. A number of collected B-mode images are supplied to an image processing apparatus other than the above-mentioned ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus. Then, this image processing apparatus forms and displays the above-mentioned B-mode images as a three-dimensional image by reconstructing the three-dimensional image according to a Voxel method or the like. Also, in an ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus which has a function to display a bloodstream, for example, in color, a number of color Doppler images in the three-dimensional measurement space are collected, and a number of color Doppler images thus collected are supplied to the image processing apparatus similarly as described above, in which they are formed as a three-dimensional image by effecting the three-dimensional image reconstruction.
However, in such conventional ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus, a number of B-mode images in the three-dimensional measurement space are temporarily collected. Then, a number of B-mode images thus collected are supplied to the image processing apparatus other than the ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus, in which they are displayed as the three-dimensional image by effecting the three-dimensional image reconstruction and then displayed. Therefore, a three-dimensional image cannot be displayed in a real time while the diagnostic object of the inspected object is being scanned by the ultrasonic wave beams. Thus, the three-dimensional shape of the above-mentioned diagnostic object cannot be observed statically or dynamically so that sufficient diagnostic information cannot be obtained.